Wright of Way

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Don't Shop at Burlington Coat Factory

Don't Shop at Burlington Coat Factory. We are lodging an official complaint with the BBB and this posting is a link to the entire description of our ordeal. The online submission form only allows for 2030 characters to describe the horror scene, so I'm providing the full details here for further review.

For the Georgia Business Bureau:

We are writing to request your help in obtaining our merchandise ordered from the Baby Depot department of the Morrow, Georgia, Burlington Coat Factory store.

Our experiences with this store have been horrific. We ordered more than $1,000.00 in baby furniture for our (then unborn) daughter on March 27, 2006. When we placed the order and paid the 25% deposit, we were told at that time that the furniture would take 12-18 weeks to arrive. We began contacting the store at 12 weeks to check the status of our order. Each time we called, the stories and excuses changed. No one seemed able to give us any definite information. Some employees actually told us that there was no record of our order, but other employees said that our order had been placed. Each time we were referred to JoAnn, who is the manager of the Baby Depot Department of that store and the individual who originally wrote up our order. Incidentally, no other store manager or assistant store manager was ever able to help us; we always had to wait to speak with JoAnn and only on the days she was in the office. It is shocking that only one person can access the computers and track orders for the Baby Depot. Even the store manager, Timothy Thomas, was unable to assist. This included the time when JoAnn took a week-long vacation.

JoAnn sent us on quite a chase to “look” for our furniture. She initially stated it had been sent to the wrong store, but she dropped that story when we asked why that “store” (she never could determine which store incidently) wouldn’t just send it to the Morrow location. Then she said that it was sent back to the manufacturer, but she encouraged us to contact “corporate” to see if they could help us locate the order. We tried the phone number she gave us, but we were told that only employees of the store could request information on an order: another false lead with another dead end! We were calling JoAnn every other day to determine the status of our order and to see if she could help us, most times without a return call at all.

Finally, she contacted us on July 19 and said that three of the four pieces on our order were in. We arrived at the store and had to wait nearly an hour for workers just to get those three pieces (of course, JoAnn was not in the store that day). We were given a crib, hutch, and changing table.

As we began to put the crib together that weekend, we realized that it was the wrong model - the Rochester, not the Monterrey we had ordered. We immediately called the store, but were told by the store manager (not surprisingly) that nothing could be done until JoAnn arrived on Monday. On Monday, JoAnn asked us to come down to the store with the receipt to confirm our request and deposit for the Monterey model. Since we live more than an hour from this location, we asked to simply fax a copy, but were initially told that the store doesn't have a fax machine. After pressing JoAnn, she finally relented and admitted that the Morrow location has a fax machine but she didn't have the number - only the store manager has that information. We were also instructed to include her name on the "attention" line of the fax, even though the area code was a 610 number (New Jersey area code) and not in Atlanta. Unfortunately, the fax machine number was incorrect. It turned out to be an individual’s personal fax number. Knowing that she would never receive that fax, we made the hour-long trek back to the Morrow store and handed her the receipt. JoAnn told us that she has no idea when the correct crib and still-missing chest of drawers would arrive, but said that she would get it to us in 2-4 weeks.
We have been calling every few days to try and determine an estimate for the arrival of the missing pieces. The latest story is that JoAnn or anyone else in the store is unable to know delivery data on specific pieces. According to JoAnn there is no way to know. She just unloads inventory and hope it shows up. There is no record or manifest, no logistics manager or delivery system.

In summary, this 20+ week experience has been filled with lies, deception, irresponsibility and ineptitude. JoAnn, when pressed, actually admitted that they lost our original order and never had placed our original order. When we started to inquire about the status, they decided on their own to order the Rochester crib - without ever checking with us - because that is what "usually goes with the Beatrice Furniture" we ordered. They never ordered the correct crib. Our daughter is now almost four months old (we ordered the crib 6 weeks before she was born), and we are being told by JoAnn that we won’t know when the crib will come in. She had told us that the crib "might" be on her shipment this past Friday, but not suprisingly, she contacted us to let us know that the crib was not there. We are amazed that there is no possible way for JoAnn or anyone at her store to determine when a shipment has been placed and where it is in the delivery process.

Obviously, this is unacceptable. Our experiences at this store have been unbelievably frustrating. The 18 weeks (that was the latest time we could expect our crib)passed in July and we are going on 21 weeks with no crib or 5 drawer chest. We have already contacted our credit card company, since we have already paid our money for the $400.00 crib and were given a crib by the store that costs less than $200.00. Instead of the Baby Depot employees expediting this order, it was recommended that we contact the store and corporate headquarters to see if the crib would arrive in time. We have e-mailed corporate TWICE (once on July 25th and once on August 9th), but we have not heard ANYTHING from them either. We contacted our credit card company on August 12th to dispute the charges for us since no one is responding to our on-going cries for help.

We would ask your assistance in working with the Morrow location of Burlington Coat Factory to deliver both of our ordered pieces and receiving at least a 50% discount on both pieces to compensate for our time, inconvenience and poor customer service. Additionally, we would like this correspondence to serve as an official complaint against Burlington Coat Factory, as well as a warning for other consumers when visiting this location. As it stands today, we will never do business with this company again unless events take a dramatically surprising turn for the better.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Amazing Marketing Video

This is an amazing car video. Where did these guys learn to drive like this?



Why can't we make commercials like this? Truly makes me want to test drive a Gemini.